Knitting, Sewing, Crocheting. Mostly.

This has been a good week for ideas! I visit a lot of different websites, mostly craft- or baby-related. When it comes to new ideas, I tend to be less efficiency-oriented and more interested in things that are fun or might interest Oli. However, my husband did forward to me a chain email of “home remedies.” You know the kind – each tidbit of advice is central on the screen with an accompanying picture, and there is usually the assertion “I saw this on TV and it really works!!!” thrown in for good measure.

Hokey format aside, there can be some solid wisdom in a list like that, for example, the notion of picking up small glass shards with a moistened cotton ball to make sure you get them all. One in particular worked really well for me last night: a recipe to get rid of fruit flies.

We have until recently been keeping a small compost bin in the house, to be sent into the backyard bin when it gets full. Neither of us keeps up with the rotation, so it naturally became the home to a hundred or so tiny fruit flies that have been clouding my kitchen for a couple of days (we decided to nix the bin after this last infestation). The email suggested a small dish with about a half inch of apple cider vinegar and two drops of dish soap, mixed well. I set one by the trash can and one on the kitchen window sill. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they each had a decent number of dead flies floating in the mix after about four hours. Hey, it really does work!

Another fun idea that I gleaned from babycenter.com is for a toy “shower” that Oli can use in the tub. Very simple – use an empty plastic yogurt or butter tub, poke holes in the top, then fill the tub with bath water and snap the lid on. When Oli holds it upside down, she can see little rain drops fall out and splash into the bath. I can’t wait to try it tonight!

The last idea was one I suddenly decided I needed last week – an online meal planner. I hit up Food On The Table, which offers a free login. It narrowed down three meals for me based on 1) my usual grocery store, 2) the things I checked off that we normally use as ingredients, and 3) what I felt like eating next week. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle and it came up with three dishes for me to try out, including a comprehensive grocery list for what I would need. I just crossed off the items I already had and appended the rest of my grocery list to the bottom, and was able to hit the store with no fuss. I’ve made two of the dinners so far; the recipes are really easy. They are also new to me, so we’re branching out a little bit from the regular chicken and rice/pasta and meat sauce rut.

Has anyone else come across a few good ideas lately? Just one or two little things can make such a difference in how much time we spend on the necessary versus the fun!

I was thinking about our bodies and habits the other day and got to thinking about organs specifically. Most of our parts complain if we don’t treat them right. We coddle our sour stomachs after a night of beer and hot dogs, we favor our extremities if they are sore after exercising too hard. We eat foods that bust cholesterol for the sake of our hearts and drink lots of water to help out the kidneys. But what about the liver? The liver never complains, in my experience. My liver is such a champ – taking junk food and alcohol and breaking it down for me, no sweat. No whining, no odd, hard-to-place pains. So I thought I’d try to find out what I could do to reward my little trooper!

It turns out that most of my diet already is the reward to my liver. The typical rainbow-colored fruits and veggies that are recommended for our health are also recommended for our livers, to help them detoxify, produce new cells, and continue to be all-around bad asses.

Here are some stock photos of my very favorite liver friendly foods:

I also found a recipe for “Liquid Green Drink” which is supposed to regenerate your liver… I don’t know if that should be regenerate or rejuvenate, but it still sounds neat.

Ingredients:

1 lemon’s juice
1 tbsp chlorophyll
1 tbsp aloe vera juice
8 oz water

I would add to that 1 tbsp agave nectar, unless the aloe vera juice is pre-sweetened. Sounds fairly inoffensive to me!